Bombarded as we are with the media's sound bites and video clips, it is difficult to imagine a time when the task of recording and recounting the news of the world was assigned to artists and their paintings.
For several centuries, historical painting was considered the very pinnacle of achievement in the French Academy's hierarchy of genres. This fact inspired Pierre Landry, a curator at La Musee d'art Contemporain de Montreal (MACM) to revive and update the practice in the institution's summer show, "We come in peace/Histories of the Americas."
"Histories" comprises mostly new work from 17 artists working in the Americas. The theme here is contemporary artists taking a look back at, and commenting on, major events in their respective nations' histories. Here are French settlers and indigenous peoples in Quebec, of course, but also veteran rock vocalist Ozzy Osborne urinating on the Alamo in Texas (in a Ruben Ortiz-Torres piece), as well as a model of a soccer stadium turned torture pen under the regime of Chilean dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet by Cristian Silva. His father had been a commentator in the stadium before the junta moved in.